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Descartes com Lentes

A language flow that reinvents the language. A literary construction that imagines the coming of philosopher René Descartes to Brazil in Mauricio de Nassau’s caravan. The confrontation between the prerogatives of the Cartesian thinking and other forms of knowledge, based in the exuberant flows of the brasilis’ land. A sole with the actress Nadja Naira that covers the narrative accidents of this youth text of the lighthouse-poet Paulo Leminski.

Written in the end of the 60’s the text is considered the generator embryo of Catatau, the mythic work of the poet.

“In these climates where the animal eats the books and the air ‘caruncha’ (woodworms) the thoughts, these trees still dripping the flood waters. Ah, Brazil, Parinambouc, my Troy, this world is dirty; this world doesn’t come out: it is a dirt in my understanding, in the lens of my glass.”

Paulo Leminski was born in 1945 in Curitiba, Paraná State, South of Brazil, mulatto of Polish father and Black mother. Multimedia poet transited in diverse areas: poetry, prose, translation, publicity, graphic arts, comic books, TV, popular music. Was also history teacher and judo black belt. His debut as writer was in Revista Invenção, of the concretist group from São Paulo, in 1964 at the age of 18. During the 60, 70 and 80’s he gathered around him many generations of poets, writers and artists. His house, in Pilarzinho neighborhood, became a place of informal meetings and even “peregrinations”. Many people wanted to see Leminski, from unknowns to famous like Caetano Veloso, of whom he was partner in musical compositions. He was also part of the Brazilian poetic vanguard, wrote and translated haikais, created free verses, biographed unlikely characters like Jesus Christ, Trotski, Basho and Cruz e Sousa, produced a multiple work, in which stands out Catatau, a joycean narrative flux considered his mythic work. Inveterate bohemian died in 1989.